Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and People’s Temple. Jim Guinn. 2017.

Road to Jonestown is the definitive account of Jim Jones and the tragic events of Jonestown, the largest murder-suicide in American history. Based on newly released documents and new interviews with survivors, some of whom had never spoken publicly before, it answers the question, How could so many people not only die for Jim Jones but kill for him, too?

In this riveting narrative, Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s life, from his extramarital affairs, drug use, and fraudulent faith healing to the fraught decision to move almost a thousand of his followers to a settlement in the jungles of Guyana in South America. Guinn provides stunning new details of the events leading to the fatal day in November 1978, when more than nine hundred people died - including almost three hundred infants and children - after being ordered to swallow a cyanide-laced drink.